


Pets

by thefairyknight



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
Genre: Bonding, Family, Gen, Kidfic, Pets, Tragedy, animal experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 16:56:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4312974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefairyknight/pseuds/thefairyknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rustle from the rat cage drew her attention, and she ventured over, peering between the bars. Its furry occupant had woken up, it seemed, and one round, black eye blinked at her, before there was some swift movement and the rat retreated further into its cage.</p>
<p>“Hello?” April called. “Hello, Mister Rat? Are you awake? Would you like some pizza, too?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pets

 

 

“They can eat _anything?”_ April gaped, leaning over to stare at the tiny turtles milling in their tank. Her father chuckled.

“ _Almost_ anything,” he corrected. “Anything edible to humans, at least, and a few things not. They’re not ordinary turtles, honey. They’re… special.”

“Because of the space stuff you gave them?” she clarified, nevertheless refusing to tear her eyes away from the turtles. They were so little! And cute! She wished she could take them home with her, but her father had been pretty clear that that wasn’t going to happen. Still, after weeks and weeks of pestering – ever since April had learned that he worked with animals – he’d finally relented and let her come into the lab with him.

She knew part of it was because he felt guilty for having to work on the weekend.

She didn’t mind, though, not when there were _turtles!_ And a rat, but he’d been hiding ever since she came in. Sleeping, her father said, because it was daytime and rats preferred the night.

“Because of their injections,” her father confirmed. “If we do our jobs here right, April, these little guys are going to change the whole world.”

“How?” she wondered.

“It’s complicated,” he replied. “But basically, the more we learn about what happens to them thanks to their injections, and what happens to the rat, the more we learn about what might happen to humans, too. They’re teaching us a lot.”

April giggled at the thought of a turtle or a rat being a teacher. She tapped the glass, and one of the little turtles raised his head.

“What are their names?” she wondered.

“They don’t have names. Just numbers,” her father said.

She frowned, and finally turned to look at him.

“Why don’t they have names?” she demanded.

“Because…” her father hesitated, glancing between her and the tank, and she knew he was trying to decide if he should tell a lie or not. She could always tell when he was lying. He was terrible at it.

At the increasingly stubborn set of her jaw, he sighed, and relented.

“Because they might not live very long,” he admitted. “What we’re doing is very important, and we’re careful, April, but we don’t always know what might happen. That’s why we do these tests on animals, before we do them on people. The turtles don’t have names because that only makes it sadder if they don’t make it.”

April’s eyes widened in horror.

“No!” she gasped.

“April…”

“Daddy, that’s _awful!_ ” she insisted, her hair whipping around her head as she turned back to the tank. “You have to stop!”

Her father sighed.

“This is why I didn’t want you to meet them,” he said.

“You can’t hurt them! They’re just little turtles!”

“I’m not trying to hurt them, April,” he insisted. “What I’m doing has actually been good for them! It’s just things you can’t predict go wrong, sometimes. Unexpected things…” he trailed off.

April stared at her own reflection in the glass of the tank, overlaying the four turtles, all happily nestled around their muddy little pond.

“Like Mom,” she said.

Her father stilled.

“What?” he breathed.

“Like when the doctors gave Mom injections. They were supposed to be good for her. But she still died.”

For a moment, there was only silence. A soft rustling came from the rat’s cage. April looked over, but she still couldn’t see him. Her father rested a heavy hand on her head.

“Yeah. Like Mom,” he agreed. “But sweetheart, this research? If it goes well, it will save people. People who get sick, like Mom. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

April let out a breath, and brushed at the itchy corners of her eyes.

“They’re very brave turtles,” she decided.

“The very bravest,” her dad confirmed.

“Then they should have names!” she declared, all at once, whipping around again, a small flurry of determination. “If they’re gonna be brave and help save people, then they deserve names! And to have fun! Like real pet turtles. They should watch movies, and play games, and – and eat pizza!”

There were tears rolling down her cheeks, and her words probably weren’t the most intelligible, but her father understood anyway. He shushed her and hugged her, humming softly as she clutched at his coat.

“Okay,” he agreed. “You’re right. Our brave turtles should have names.”

“And the rat, too,” April insisted.

“And the rat, too.”

 

~

 

“Run that past me again?” her father said, turning over to look at her from his desk. April was busily trying to coax the biggest of the turtles into having a bite of pizza. So far the other three had all been very daring about trying some, but their brother was a little more wary.

“Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael,” April dutifully recited. “C’mon, Raphael, pizza! It’s good, I promise!”

One of the other turtles wandered back over, but April gently scooched him aside with her free hand.

“No, Michelangelo, you’ve already had yours!”

The turtle dubbed ‘Raphael’ seemed to decide that the possibility of having his tiny tidbit of pizza stolen was a good enough motivation to try it, though, and swiftly pulled the chunk from April’s fingers. She giggled as he munched on it, now as happy as the other three had been.

“And why are we naming them after Italian renaissance artists?” her father wondered.

“Because they’re important turtles, so I named them after important people,” April informed him, as if this should be obvious. “And we were learning about it in school.”

“Oh, I see.”

Her father turned back to his desk, and she sighed at him.

“What?” he wondered.

“You haven’t named the rat yet,” April scolded. The rat in question was sleeping again, though if she peered just right she could see a tiny tuft of fur, and the curl of one pink ear.

“Are you sure you don’t want to do it, sweetheart? You seem to be on a roll.”

“No. I named the turtles, and you’re supposed to name the rat. That was the deal,” she reminded him, summoning up the special kind of exasperation that only children could muster.

“Well I’m still thinking about it, then,” her father decided.

“It’s not hard, Daddy,” she scolded, but soon enough the turtles had arrested her attention again, as Leonardo splashed out of the tank’s little pond and over to the food dish. Donatello was already there, though neither of them seemed very enthusiastic about the food pellets. April glanced at her father, and then snuck all four of them a few extra bits of pizza.

A rustle from the rat cage drew her attention, and she ventured over, peering between the bars. Its furry occupant had woken up, it seemed, and one round, black eye blinked at her, before there was some swift movement and the rat retreated further into its cage.

“Hello?” April called. “Hello, Mister Rat? Are you awake? Would you like some pizza, too?”

There were some scurrying rustling sounds, but the rat didn’t come closer. After a minute, April squished a few bits of pizza through the bars, and decided to leave him be. She’d had it ingrained in her head while her mother was sick that it was best to leave sleeping things to sleep. It was important that everyone got enough rest, even during the daytime.

She went back to the turtles, and watched them swim for a while.

She didn’t notice any more movement from the rat cage, but when her aunt came to pick her up, the little bits of pizza she’d put into it were gone.

 

~

 

“Splinter,” her father declared. “He looks like a Splinter to me.”

April nodded sagely, and patted him on the arm.

“Good job,” she said.

It could have just been her imagination, but in the shadows of the cage’s little bedding area, she thought she saw the flicker of pink ears twitching.

 

~

 

April waited just long enough for her father to open the door before she rushed into the lab, hurrying over to the turtle tank. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she turned back towards her father.

“Where is he?” she demanded. “How come he’s not with the others?”

“He’s not feeling well, April. We keep them separate when that happens,” her father explained, but nevertheless gestured towards a smaller tank, where a lone turtle was sitting listlessly in a tiny amount of water. April ran over to it and peered inside, frowning, a line of worry deep between her eyebrows.

“But he’ll be lonely! Sick _and_ lonely!”

“He’s a turtle, honey. Turtles don’t really get all that lonely,” her father protested.

“Poor Donatello. He _looks_ lonely,” she insisted.

“Well, now he’s got you to keep him company, okay? So you just keep an eye on Donatello for me, how does that sound?”

“Of course!” she readily agreed, and then, before her father could object, she carefully picked up the isolation tank and carried it over to the big one, settling it down beside it.

“April,” her father warned.

“I’m not taking him out!” she said. “I’m not dumb! But they can still look at one another this way. It’s less lonely!”

“Turtles don’t _get_ lonely,” her father repeated, softly, but he didn’t object, so she counted it as a win.

The rules of this visit had been very carefully laid out for her before she came – Donatello wasn’t feeling well, so she couldn’t give him any food except for his pellets, or pick him up, or anything like that.

April had decided not to bring any pizza, because it just seemed mean to give it to the others and exclude poor sick Donatello. So instead she’d brought one of her favourite books. The Three Musketeers. While her father was busy, she opened it up, and started to read.

“On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, in which the author of Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in as perfect a state of revolution as if the Hu… Hugun… as if someone had just made a second La Rochelle out of it.” She glanced up at the tanks. Raphael was sitting on Michelangelo and Leonardo was swimming, but Donatello seemed to be listening. “I don’t know what that bit means,” she confessed.

Donatello moved, slightly, and she took that as encouragement to keep going anyway.

 

~

 

“I don’t understand it,” her father was saying to Mr. Sachs, while April handed out her weekly treat of pizza. “He was passing the tests with extraordinary aptitude before, but now he’s… lagging.”

“A deterioration?” Mr. Sachs asked. April gave Donatello – who was better enough to be back with his brothers – a big piece, and then headed over to Splinter’s cage. The rat was being particularly shy today, it seemed. He’d started coming out more, almost saying ‘hello’ to her for the past few visits, twitching whiskers and smart little eyes, but apparently not this time.

“No, no, the scans aren’t showing anything like that. And it’s not really significant, it’s just… with the rate of previous improvement, the drop-off is inexplicable. He should still be improving. Not stalling. I’ve tried switching up the tests, but the results are more or less the same.”

April slipped in a few bites of pizza.

“Good morning,” she whispered, to the little tip of a hairless tail that she could see.

“Maybe we’ve just reached the limits of a rat’s potential,” Mr. Sachs suggested. “What about the muscular improvements?”

The little tail tip retracted, so that all of Splinter was completely hidden. With a shrug, April went back to the turtles, and gently reached in to break up an over-sized chunk of pizza that Michelangelo was attempting to devour whole.

“Improvement’s still steady. No sign of the same anomalies that the previous subjects experienced,” her father replied.

“Good,” Mr. Sachs decided. “That’s good! We’re making progress. The intelligence tests are of secondary importance at this point anyway. As long as we don’t _lose_ cognitive functionality, I’m satisfied.”

“Well, time will tell on that front.”

When Mr. Sachs left, with a laugh and a pat to her head, April wandered over to her father.

“I don’t think Splinter likes Mr. Sachs,” she declared.

Her father snorted.

“I don’t think Splinter likes anyone except you, honey,” he countered.

“That’s silly. He likes you, too, Daddy. And the turtles,” she reminded him.

“Oh, of course. How could I forget?”

He smiled and patted her cheek, but she could tell he didn’t really believe her. Grown-ups always seemed to forget that animals weren’t dumb. April forgave him, though. She supposed that when you were as smart as her father was, it was easy to forget that anyone else was any kind of smart _at all_.

 

~

It all happened very quickly. Her father was carrying two of the turtles back from their injections when his leg hit the side of a lab stool that April had unthinkingly moved, and he stumbled, reflexively moving the turtles closer to his body. His left hand banged against the side of the desk, though, and opened, and April saw it as if it was happening very slowly as the turtle he’d been holding in it started to fall…

She dove, scattering the homework she’d been working on, stretching out her little palms and reaching, and gasped in relief when she felt the teeny turtle body land against them. In her rush to keep him safe she almost squished him between her fingers, but she stopped herself just in time, instead cupping her hands and staring down at the little shell with the distinctive blue dot on its back.

“Leonardo!” she exclaimed. A small head craned up towards her, as if responding to the name.

“April!” her father said, and she almost banged her head on the desk when she looked up, too. “You – you _caught_ him?”

“Yeah!” she confirmed. “He looks okay. How’s Raphael?”

Her father bent down and showed her the other turtle, who was wriggling around, apparently fine apart from being alarmed.

She let out an exaggerated breath, and after a second, her father chuckled.

“Those were some smooth moves, kiddo.”

“I think I scraped my elbow,” she admitted.

Her father helped her back onto her feet and looked at her elbow, after they’d gotten the turtles safely back in their tank.

“No more leaving things out of place,” he said, fixing a Kermit bandaid onto what he jokingly dubbed her ‘combat wound’. April nodded, chastised more by the near-miss than any particular reproach in his tone.

“Sorry, Leonardo,” she whispered.

Next week she’d be sure to give him the biggest chunk of pizza.

 

~

 

April balanced her chin atop her arms as she stared into the turtle tank. Michelangelo and Donatello were swimming, and Leonardo was napping in his favourite spot, but Raphael was close by, munching peacefully on the last crumb of pizza.

“I got in trouble with the teacher again,” she confessed. Her father was out of the lab, talking to some of the other scientists about something, leaving her alone with instructions to stay put. Not that she would have left, anyway. She wasn’t allowed into most of the other rooms in the lab, even though she was just itching with curiosity to see what was in them.

Raphael finished his crumb and blinked at her.

“She said I pick fights,” she continued, mumbling into her shirt sleeves. “But I don’t pick fights! I just don’t like it when people are mean. I don’t understand how come Billy Thompsin can get away with saying all those things and _he_ doesn’t get in trouble, but I throw one little punch and the principle calls my dad!”

She heard a rustle from Splinter’s cage, and glanced over. When she looked back, Raphael was still looking at her. She offered him a smile, and gave the glass nearby a very gentle tap.

“I know. I should ‘use my words’ and stuff.”

The door opened, and her father came back in, giving her a glance.

“Are you telling the turtles about what happened today?” he guessed.

“Raphael’s on my side,” she insisted. “He thinks Billy Thompsin had it coming.”

“ _Raphael_ is a turtle and doesn’t talk,” her father informed her, his mouth doing that thing it always did when he was trying not to smile.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” April grumbled.

 

~

 

April’s squeal of delight caught her father’s attention almost immediately.

“He jumped!” she declared. “Dad, did you see? Michelangelo jumped!”

Her father hurried over, and looked at where she was dangling a slice of pizza into the turtle tank. Michelangelo was hanging from it, by the mouth, a good couple inches off of the little false log he’d been sitting on.

“He jumped that whole distance?” her father asked.

“Yup!” April proudly declared, and he grabbed her hand, holding her in place.

“Don’t move while I get the tape measure,” he requested.

April complied, while Michelangelo kicked his little legs slightly, clearly caught up in the dilemma of having his mouth full of pizza, but being unable to chew without inadvertently letting go.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just for a little bit.”

A rustling sound caught her attention, and she glanced over to the rat cage to see Splinter. He was out and about, unusually alert, and watching them. April offered him a smile. His whiskers twitched, and he looked at where Michelangelo was dangling. She thought he seemed kind of amused.

“Splinter thinks you’re funny,” she whispered to the turtle of the hour. His brothers were closing in, either curious about the spectacle, or wondering when they’d get their turn at the pizza.

Finally her dad came back, measured the distance to his satisfaction, and let her lower Michelangelo back onto his log. She saved just enough pizza for Splinter before he and the rest of the turtles tore into it. They were good enough at it now that she almost never needed to tear bits off for them.

When she moved over to the rat cage, Splinter didn’t shy away, only twitching his nose at the offered pizza crust and then taking it with tiny, clawed little hands. April grinned delightedly in return.

“There you go, pizza time,” she said.

With another twitch of his nose, the rat plopped down, and settled in for his lunch.

 

~

 

The day had been weird.

It hadn’t started that way. In fact, it had been like most Saturdays at first – they’d had pancakes for breakfast and April had watched cartoons, and then her dad had asked if she would be okay with going into the lab, just for the afternoon, and she’d said yes, like she always did. She’d fished out some leftover pizza from Friday night’s dinner, and at his insistence she’d brought her math homework, and they’d listened to the radio all the way over.

But then, about an hour after they arrived, her dad started acting strangely. He’d rushed out of the lab, and been gone for a really long time, and when he’d come back, there’d been an awful look on his face. April had been afraid that she was in big trouble, but when he talked to her it was clear that he was mad at somebody else.

But he’d still called her aunt, to ask her to come pick April up. They’d argued on the phone, and then it had been clear that her aunt couldn’t come.

“What’s wrong?” April asked, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice, fidgeting and wondering if maybe she _had_ done something to get in trouble, after all.

“Nothing,” her father insisted. “It’s – there’s nothing wrong with you, April, okay? It’s just work stuff. I’ve got to sort some things out. I need you to…” he trailed off, and then he grabbed up her homework and her camera, and took her jacket off the peg on the wall. “We’re going out to the car, okay?”

“Can’t I stay here?” she asked, plaintively.

“No,” he replied, in his ‘no arguments’ tone of voice. “I want you to go to the car, and stay there until I come. No matter what. Okay? Work on your homework, but _stay there_.”

“How come I can’t stay in the lab?”

“Because you can’t.”

“But how come-”

“Dammit, April!” he snapped, and she froze, shocked by the harsh words. A few tears pricked at the corner of her eyes, but she was almost immediately swept up in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” her father said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap, you haven’t done anything. It’s okay, sweetheart. I know this is weird, but I just need you to listen and not ask a million questions for once. Please?”

Hesitantly, she nodded, and did her best to stay quiet as he led her out to the car, and shuffled her into the back seat.

“I love you, kiddo. I’ll be back in a while,” he said, and shut the door.

April sat, and waited. She worked on her homework. She tried to turn on the radio, but then remembered that the car didn’t work without the keys, which her father had kept. She got hungry and ended up eating the last of the pizza herself. After a while she got so bored that she started doing extra math, which was nearly unheard of for her. She kicked at the back of the driver’s side seat, which was definitely against the rules, but by then she was feeling miserable and defiant and didn’t care. At least he could have let her stay in the lab. At that point she was sorely tempted to get out of the car and just walk around, but the last time she’d wandered off her father had looked so scared, that she couldn’t _quite_ bring herself to go that far.

_Any minute,_ she thought, _he’ll be back any minute._

The sound of a fire alarm scattered her thoughts.

She recognized it from the fire drills at school, almost straight away. Curious, she turned and peered out through the back window of the car, and her eyes widened at the plume of smoke she could see billowing out of the far windows of the building. A fire. A real life fire! Everyone would have to go out into the parking lot, just like at school.

April waited, and waited, but it didn’t seem like anyone was coming out.

It didn’t seem like _her father_ was coming out.

The conflict between doing what she was told and doing what all of her instincts were screaming at her to do lasted less than a second that time, and April opened the car door and ran outside.

“Daddy?” she called.

There was nobody around.

The rule was, you were supposed to go _outside_ when there was a fire, not _in_ , but if her father was still inside, April just knew she had to find him. Maybe he was trying to get Splinter and the turtles out. Maybe he was having troubles carrying them all, or maybe Splinter was hiding and he couldn’t get him out of his cage. They were important. He wouldn’t just leave them to die.

With more bravery than she thought she felt, April headed into the building.

It was hot and smoky, and the fire alarm was impossibly loud in her ears. She knew to keep low, and so she did, ducking down as she raced for the lab. The door was open a bit, but when she pulled it all the way, a wash of heat hit her in the face.

“Daddy!” she called.

There wasn’t any answer.

The lab was half consumed with fire, messy and broken, and it was terrifying. She’d never seen flames so big or out of control. There was no sign of her father, but there was another door behind the fire. Maybe he’d gone out through that one. Maybe he’d left through the back part of the building, and that was why she hadn’t seen him.

The one thing April _did_ see was that Splinter and Leonardo and Raphael and Donatello and Michelangelo were all still in the lab, strewn about in the broken mess of the floor, dangerously close to the fire. She hurried and found them all one by one, scooping Splinter into her pocket and gathering the turtles up into her hands. By the time she’d got them all the smoke was terrible, and Splinter was making frightened squeaks from her pocket, and the turtles were twitching against her fingers.

Part of her wanted to keep looking for her father.

But the fire was too hot, and she didn't know where else to look for him.

After only a second more of indecision, April turned, and fled.

 

 


End file.
